Week Two

PhD presentation/discussion/feedback
(With yummy wraps!)





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Maria – presented...
(Propositional Knowledge/Philosophy)
-Existentialism – Kierkegaard -
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kierkegaard/

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Tractatus
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus is the only book-length philosophical work published by the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein during his lifetime.
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Wittgenstein
“The whole modern conception of the world is founded on the illusion that the so-called laws of nature are the explanations of natural phenomena.”

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Article by Roger Scruton
Biographical info
Quotes from the text: Scruton” (Ian provided a handout!)
Aesthetics, culture, education, -------

Questions to focus our reading:
What is Culture?
How can we promote a philosophy with art as its heart?
What kinds of things can we learn from aesthetic inquiry?
What is our collective culture? How is it represented in schools?
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King & King (Picture book)
By Linda de Haan, Stern Nijland
View the complete text on-line.



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Some musings....

GP: Is “art” simply a vehicle or is it a carrier of a particular world view?
(What does “aesthetic” mean for us today? An appreciation of music? Colour? Shape? Form? Can this be taught? Imparted?)

GP: How do we reconcile our sense of art as a "human experience" with cultures that have no colour or art to speak of? Is the way we think about things limited by the language we speak?
(See "Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes" by Daniel L. Everett)

"Language for colors is an interesting frontier in investigating the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, that language shapes and limits how you think about something. We look at a rainbow, which is actually a continuous grading of hue, and we see several distinct colors. Other cultures do not see those same bands of color--they see as one color areas we would consider transitional; and as transitional areas we would call "blue" or "red"."

(Taken from: http://www.avclub.com/comments/article/23426/)

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Limits of Reason (Amanda)
What is the mind? How do other languages talk about this concept if they don't have a word for it? ie French.

Read: Theatre of the Mind by Jay Ingram...
for a great exploration of "where consciousness comes from."
(See also "Theatre of the Mind" podcasts.)












Salome: (Just a little clip...)


There is also this great site for bringing Fine Arts ideas to the classroom:
It's the ArtsEdge site at the Kennedy Center.